Women’s Summit Held in Chicago to Help Women Advance in their Careers

Jones Lang Laselle real estate firm held their first women’s summit on Tuesday to help women to advance their careers.

On September 27, the first ever women’s summit was held by real estate service firm Jones Lang Lasalle, based in Chicago, Illinois, to help find better ways for women to advance in their careers.

The firm invited 40 female managers from its offices across the United States to attend the training session, as the firm hoped these women would become mentors to young female employees.

After falling pregnant with her second child, Chief Diversity Officer at Jones Lang Lasalle, Angela Roseboro was told she would now be put on the “mommy track”, a career path offering her fewer opportunities to advance in her line of work. Ms Roseboro was determined to prove him wrong.

Angela Roseboro has over 18 years of experience in leadership and in building best in class human resources, diversity and engagement platforms for global corporations.

“Diversity can not be seen as a programme, it must be a strategic enabler,” said Ms Roseboro. “Diversity has to be embedded in process, so when you think about how you hire, how you retain, diversity can not be in a side programme; it has to be in the process all the time.”

According to a survey by Commercial Real Estate Women Network, 36% of professional women in 2005 were working in the commercial real estate industry.

Angela Roseboro hopes that the women attending the session would help each other to reach the “executive ranks” of the company, and hopes that by the time her own children face the corporate world they won’t have to deal with these issues.

“I want to see people be given the opportunity to succeed based on their merits,” she said.

By Bethan Hâf Marsh

[Image courtesy of high performance advocates ]